was a Japanese trade union leader who served as the first president of the

Japanese Trade Union Confederation The , commonly known as , is the largest national trade union center in Japan, with over six million members as of 2011.Rengo websitRengo brochure 2010-2011 Retrieved on July 6, 2012 It was founded in 1989 as a result of the merger of the Japan ...

from 1989 to 1994. Born in

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2. ...

, Yamagishi began working in a

telegram Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...

office, and joined the

Japan Telecommunications Workers' Union The Federation of Information and Communication Technology Service Workers of Japan (ICTJ, ja, 情報産業労働組合連合会) is a trade union representing IT and telecommunications workers in Japan. The union was established in 1962 as the ...

. After many years active in the union, in 1982, he was elected as its president. Yamagishi decided to focus on making international and national links between unions. He affiliated the union to the

Postal, Telegraph and Telephone International The Postal, Telegraph and Telephone International (PTTI) was a global union federation bringing together unions of communications workers worldwide. History While a meeting of unions of communication workers was held in Paris in 1911, no lasting o ...

, and served as president of the international from 1985 to 1990. In 1989, he was a leading figure in bringing together the public- and private-sector unions in Japan, forming the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo), and serving as its first president. As the most important trade union leader in Japan, Yamagishi supported the

Japan Socialist Party The was a socialist and progressive political party in Japan that existed from 1945 to 1996. The party was founded as the Social Democratic Party of Japan by members of several proletarian parties that existed before World War II, including ...

and opposed the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. He cooperated with LDP defector Ichiro Ozawa to bring about a

non-LDP and non-JCP coalition Non-LDP and non-JCP Coalition (非自民・非共産連立政権) are terms used in Japanese politics and mean building an alliance between moderate parties excluding conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and left-wing Japanese Communist Par ...

cabinet led by

Morihiro Hosokawa is a Japanese politician and Nobility, noble who was Prime Minister of Japan from 1993 to 1994, leading a coalition government which was the first non-Liberal Democratic Party (Japan), Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government of Japan since 1955 ...

in 1993, persuading the initially reluctant socialists to support the coalition. In 1994 Yamagishi retired due to poor health. He died in 2016.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yamagishi, Akira 1929 births 2016 deaths Japanese trade union leaders People from Osaka